Grieving at Christmas: 5 suggestions for hope and healing during the holidays

Are you grieving at Christmas?

I am. I always do. I miss my mother.

I’ll bet there’s someone you miss this Christmas.  But there’s hope for your sadness and healing for the hole in your heart. Keep reading for 5 suggestions for hope and healing during this holiday season.

Maybe it’s just an era. Little children stampeding down the stairs or crying with joy when they open that special gift. Maybe it’s watching them sing in a Christmas production. Construction paper cards. A reindeer face from painted footprint and handprints, with a pom-pom nose.

Christmas brings a deluge of emotion-filled joys and bittersweet memories.

Maybe you’re making Grandma’s scones or Aunt Betty’s cookies. You’re setting up your Christmas tree by yourself. You’re missing the person who used to do this tradition for you or with you.

Their stocking lies tucked inside the Christmas bin, unfilled. There are no presents under the tree addressed to them. You hear their favorite carols on the radio, and you instantly tear up.

My mom’s favorite carol was “We Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” She cried when she sang it. Now I do, too, because it reminds me of her.

These are all good things. They are healing things. And grief, when you address it, always gets better eventually.

Grief keeps coming.

Grief is an avalanche of emotions that must roar down the mountainside, spread out, and slowly settle over new territory, where people will comb through the wreckage. Life sprouts anew. And then people adapt to the new landscape.

You can’t stop or ignore the avalanche that comes with losing someone close to you, even if that someone was difficult or hurtful to you in life (often, those griefs are the hardest because there aren’t enough positive memories to offset the hurtful ones). Pain prompts regret, anger, resentment, and self-protection.

Nostalgia is a tricky one, too.

It becomes more powerful the older that we get. As we age, we become increasingly aware of our mortality. Regardless of the fragility of life, I think most people assume they will live to be old, and they balance their benchmarks according to the 80-odd years they have on this planet. The past tends to look rosy because we remember the highlights. The future brings anxiety because our bodies are failing and we’re running out of time.

I’m making choices about sugar cookies, gingerbread houses, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” stockings, Bing Crosby, practical gifts (like small appliances), game-playing, and all of it is tied to my  mother. I can see her faces in all of it: her “that’s-not-practical” face, the “I-love-this” face, the “I’m-going-to-win-this” face, the “We’ll-be-there-in-8-hours” face, the “this-cookie-is-delicious” face, the “I-miss-my-husband” face.

Enjoying Christmas without a loved one is to enjoy Christmas with a piece of your heart missing. Christmas is still Christmas—it’s magical and wonderful, and I’m so grateful to see another one—but it’s a new Christmas. It’s a new pile-up of snow or dirt that needs time to become fully beautiful again.

here are 5 personally time-proven suggestions for managing grief at christmas:

1. Honor a tradition you shared together. I bake something my mom used to bake or do something we used to do, but I don’t do everything. I still shop on Black Friday (we went religiously and pathologically), but I don’t stand in line at 6 am and giggle, like I used to do with her. I shop at a reasonable time and usually meet a friend or family member. It’s not the same, but I feel close to her while I do the thing we always did.
2. Change your scenery. The key to overcoming the painful power of an altered occasion is to alter it yourself. Go someplace different than you usually go. Take a trip. Eat at someone else’s house. Open presents at a different time. I had a soccer-mom acquaintance whose husband died from cancer on Christmas Eve. For the ten years or so following his death, she and her kids took a vacation every Christmas. By now, she’s probably sold the house he built; in any event, they didn’t celebrate Christmas at home until they could handle it.
3. Share stories of your history. Reminisce with your friends and family. This practice, along with eulogies, remains the cornerstone of grief recovery, not just a funerals, but in all the days and years that follow someone’s passing. Sharing helps your brain recover chemically from your trauma.
4. Give yourself time to mourn. Don’t set a clock or let anyone set it for you. Grief is not an illness that runs its course in 10 days and allows for an additional 10 days if the medicine hasn’t worked. It’s a cyclical, even staged, process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These generally begin in order but can repeat, rearrange, or extend for any length of time. Pay attention to these emotions. If you get stuck in one of them for a long time, you are not grieving in a healthy way. Mental and emotional health require you to proceed and process. That’s mourning, and that’s healing. Check out Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ groundbreaking classic On Death and Dying and On Grief and Grieving for more insight and scientific explanation.
5. Create opportunities for laughter. Laughter really is the best medicine. Even surgeons agree on this. Remember the fun. Create fun. Allow yourself to be silly, festive, adventuresome, ridiculous. Fun creates new memories, which tells your brain that life is safe. It heals itself. You will always have a little hole in your heart for the loved one who’s gone, but it will hurt less as you start to live.

Decide on joy.

To generate a joyful life, I must engage in healthy thoughts and actions. What better time of the year to do this than Christmas, “the season of perpetual hope” (to quote Kate McAllister in Home Alone!

“Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”–1 Corinthians 15:18-20

 

You have hope in Christ, if you choose it.

Jesus came a human baby at Christmas so he could understand our condition.

Then Jesus died for our sins at Calvary so he could erase our destiny.

Then Jesus raised himself from the dead at Easter so he could insure our eternity.

 

Yes, I miss my mother. But her life was a gift. My life is a gift. And someday, we will share eternal life together.

“Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” 2 Corinthians 9:17